The Symphony of the Physics Police
by Chaltab
Summary: All of existence is threatened by a being known as Ashe, and only the Physics Police can stop him.
1. Dear Mom and Dad

_This is quite the undertaking. Me, the newbie, righting a sequel to one of the most hilarious stories on The story I refer to is of course Bobcat's perpetually unfinished Magnum Opus, __Ballad of the Physics Police. But seing as that story is currenlty at 66 chapters long, and, in the absense of Bobcat's co-auther Ash, will probably never be finished, this story will be completey independent of that one, and can be understood fully in its own right. Still, I would reccomend Ballad, because as I have said it is hilarious--especially the first 49 chapters._

_Bobcat is infact working with me on this story, and claims he is going to return to writing regularly despite his new life in college. (Fat chance) Anyway. All this out of the way, I shall get on with my disclaimers._

**Disclaimer 1**: I do not own Kids Next Door, The Legend of Zelda, or anything else that will be ripped off, plagarized, parodied, or otherwise stolen. I also did not create the Physics Police or their history. The story is mine. Bob and Joe are mine. And there will be plenty more OCs. Since there are technically no canon characters serving as major players, none of them can be Mary Sues. Convenient, eh?

**Disclaimer 2**: If you do not like the Legend of Zelda or do like Kids Next Door, I am sorry for this chapter, but I promise that upcoming chapters will have other fandoms plagarized and parodied. All that taken care of... On with the Story...

* * *

Symphony of the Physics Police 

**Chapter One: Dear Mom and Dad**

_Hey, mis padres, it is me, your favorite son Bob. Well. You're only son, but you get the idea. I bet you wonder why I haven't called or written in the past two weeks. Well. You see, when Einstein or whoever said that time was relative, he was right. For me it has only been about five days. You see, as odd as this may sound, I have a new job. I am a member of the interdimensional law enforcement organization known as the physics police. You see, while you may think there is only one universe, there are actually a whole bunch of them. We live in one, but there are billions of others. Some are very similar, like the universe in which I didn't have a hand in creating the cartoon suck-fest known as Kids Next Door (I'll be taking that sin to my grave), so nobody who died from watching it sued us. Therefore the bank did not foreclose on the house and we lived fairly well-off. But otherwise the universe was exactly the same, as far as I know. _

_Actually, now that I think of it, there was a discrepancy in the fourth Matrix film... In the aforementioned alternate reality, Keanu Reave's hair was red rather than black.. But you've never really been into all that science fiction stuff anyway. _

_Well. Keep reading, and you'll see that fiction is a bit of a misnomer. But first, the story of how I got here:_

_It started the very day I moved into Podunk. My old high school buddy George invited me over to watch a game or something, and when I got to his place, he told me we were going to visit his neighbor Ralph. Which I supposed was fine, even though it had taken me five friggin' hours to find his house in the first place. So we ended up in the small apartment, which for whatever reason was unlocked, about 4:30 in the afternoon's, nobody was home, though George insisted he would have been off from his job (George told me he worked locally as a janitor) and it was strange for him not to be home yet. While George searched one end of the house, I looked in the kitchen and found a note on the fridge that seemed to indicate someone named Gertrude was leaving to be with someone named Juan. It occurred to me that George had mentioned "Ralph and his wife Gurty"..._

"_So his wife left him," I thought. Poor guy. Oh well. None of my concern. If he left town because of it, or committed suicide, there was nothing I could do to help him. Then I noticed some rather funky lights coming from a nearby microwave, and I noticed a casserole inside, ranomly transforming between various levels of freeze and thaw, and occasionally becoming something entirely other than a casserole. I was scared, of course, but suddenly the casesserole became something like a ten-foot-pole and smashed into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. Then there was a big flash of light...What happened next? Well. Remember those old videogames you used to say were "good for nothing" and I wouldn't care and spend hours at a time playing them?_

**oooo**

Bob snapped awake and found himself in a dark corridor. _Where in the name of the carnivorous cow am I? _He thought. It certainly was not the apartment of Ralph and Gertrude.

_"Etuna?" _An elderly, strained-sounding voice said. Bob didn't know what he meant.

"Hello?" Bob called back.Suddenly a torch lit up as if by magic. And indeed, there was an old man nearby. He was clearly wounded, with pixelated blood running down his clothing.

"_Etuna, Tesa. Domo Nokyu Lena So Jo Hyrule?_" The old man said.

Bob still could not understand a word he was saying. Except for the lastone."Did you say Hyrule?" Bob asked. Suddenly something from his past clicked. The corridor... It was made of blue stone, was about fifty feet long. On on end there was a sharp curve south (How Bob knew it was south was lost to time) and to the east end there was a small flight of stairs that ended in what appeared to be a sqaure of tightly packed dirt, with roots growing throughout it... ON THE CEILING. As if a bush hid a secred entrance."Oh my flipping gosh!" Bob yelled. "It's like I've been sucked into a Zelda game!"

The wounded old man reacted to that: "_Zeruda? Domo Sezu Jo Nava Zeruda? So En Ensuna zof Hyrule!_"

Bob tried to explain, but he realized he did not speak a word of the Hyrulean Language, and futhermore, even the Book of Mudora would not help him, as he did not speak Hylian either. "This is insane!"

"_Ennsein_?" Parroted the old man.Then something occurred to Bob. The old man, if this was indeed Hyrule on the very day he thought it was, was Link's uncle and should have a sword and a shield to give his pink-haired nephew. He could take that, kill some guards, and perhaps steal a kiss from the Princess Zelda herself! Eh. What was he thinking. She was like... sixteen? That would never work. Well. He didn't know dating customs of Hyrule, but he could never let himself _live_ with. After all, he was 22. He was a mature adult. So why was he so giddy?

"Uncle of Link," he addressed the old man.

"_Link? Domo Sezu Jo Nava Link Alsbien_?"

"I need your sword," said Bob, pointing to the blade in the man's right hand.

The old man muttered something else in Hyrulean and gave Bob the blade, along with a small blue shield. He thanked him in Japanese, and he seemed to understand half. (Why the word _Domo_ worked in both languages, Bob wouldn't know until much later. And neither will you, the reader.)

Running down the corridor, Bob drew the weapons... And stopped dead in his tracks, as a swirling red vortex had appeared in front of him.

"What now?" Bob said, looking up as if to the sky. Ominous thunder came from nowhere and scared Bob crapless. But his chagrin quickly resumed.

"Fine. As long as you don't throw me into anything ANIME related, I'll be fine."

At that moment, a perfectly normal-looking man named Joe stepped out of the portal. Perfectly normal, that is, if spiked hair, almost non-existent noses and enourmous eyes were considered normal. He was clearly an anime character.

"CURSE YOU, CHALTAB!" Bob yelled at the ceiling. He swung his sword at the man who came from the portal, but the anime man punched him in the gut, moving faster than Bob had thought possible.

"Interdimensional travel without a license." Joe said. "Interacting with inhabitants of that dimension. Atempting to alter said dimension's natural timeline. Violating the fourth wall clause. And assaulting a member of the Physics Police."

"Um... At least you speak English." Bob said, though what he had said filled him with dread.

"That means you'll understand me when I tell you that you are under arrest, then." Joe shot back.

"Did you have to hit me so hard?"

"Police Brutality is encouraged in this job. That's why I love it." Joe said.The look on Bob's face was priceless. "Just kidding, man. You _did_ swing a level-one sword at me. Now turn around I have to take you in."

Bob complied, not wanting further pain. Joe handcuffed him and then tripped him, forcing Bob to lie on the filthy floor of the medieval style castle's corridor. Then Joe ran over and returned the sword and shield, and conversed with the old man in perfect spoken Hyrulean. Bob found himself trying to facevault, and with his vitrol for anime, he knew he would hate himself later for even the attempts.Then Joe returned without the weapons, just as the roots on the far end of the tunnel began to move.

"We have to hurry," Joe said. "Link is about here."

"Really? So I DID get sucked into A Link to the Past!" Bob said.

"Not quite," Joe said, tossing the cuffed Bob into the portal. Then he jumped in himself. "All will be explained shortly," Joe said while the two were drifting in the void between dimensions. (Coincidentally, Phantom Ganon from the long-passed Ocarina of Time era floated by and handed Bob a granola bar. It seems that being banished by his master to the void between dimensions for millenia mellowed him out a bit. Nobody knows where he got a granola bar in the void between dimensions.)

Little did either man know that one girl, one palace servant, the young, but beautiful Romani Daltus hovered over them, watching from above through a drain vent in the castle's flood-proofing system. It had been installed, as Hyrule had been known to have some rather grevious flood-troubles in the pas few centuriest...

oooo

The bulding was MASSIVE. It is hard for words to desribe just how unbelieably, mind-bogglingly massive the buiding was. To put it aptly, the building was larger than most contenients. Unfortunately, since most people don't have a good grasp of the size of continent, that isn't the most vivid description. But it is the only one that translates well into English and other widely-used Earth Languages, so it will do for now. The only thing off-setting Bob's sheer awe of the bulding was the fact that it was a bright pink.

Yes, pink.

"Whoa. Why is it pink?"

"It was like that when we moved in. And there isn't enough paint in all creation to paint the whole thing."

"And the sign?"

"It isn't P2. That's what you're thinking, isn't it? It is P-squared."

"I gathered that. But what does it mean?"

"Physics Police. It did once read 'PP' but people kept making immature jokes so we used trillions of dollars in tax-payer money to get it changed. I'm very bitter about it."

Bob could tell. "And you brought me here why?"

"You've been under arrest for about 4.34 minutes. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney and will be provided one if you cannot afford it. You also have the right to wear Hello-Kitty pajama's and smear mustard on your thighs, but I don't advise it."

Bob just stared at him. "You're very troubled, aren't you?"

"Yes. And you're in a lot of trouble," Joe said as he dragged the unwitting dimensional travler into the massive Physics Police headquarters...

"Well this is just my luck," Bob muttered.


	2. Initiation

It's probably been too long for this fic to get name recognition, so from now on, all updates will alter the profile tell what's in the new chapter.

* * *

**The Symphony of the Physics Police  
Chapter 2: Initiation**

"OK, so let me get this straight," Bob said. "All fiction is actually telepathic visions of another universe!"

"Mostly," replied Joe as he handed Bob another stack of paperwork. The two sat opposite each other at a work desk in a small office tucked in the back corner of the PP headquarters.

"How much of this do I have to fill out?" said the unwitting dimensional traveler as he looked them over.

Joe pulled out an average-sized cardboard box that was still half full of papers. "All of these..." He reached for a large envelope and emptied the contents into his hands. More papers. "...and all of these."

"You have to be joking!" Bob yelled.

"Not at all. Transversing the boundaries between universes is a major offense. Not only did I have to seal up the fissure you made, but because that Microwave is so unstable, it created ripples and fissures all across the multiverse."

"That sounds bad." Bob said evenly.

"You don't know the half of it. The portal was actually opened by a man named Ralph, and he's going to take most of the blame, luckily for you." Joe paused while Bob looked over some details, then signed his name and filled in some other information. "You want something to drink?"

"Yeah, that'd be good. What'cha got?"

"We have just about anything you could want: water, Coke, the nectar of the Greek dieties... Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters..."

"What? You named a drink after the Hitchhiker's Guide novels?"

"No, it _is_ the drink from the Hithchiker's Guide novels." Joe replied. "Douglas Adams was right. It is like the brain/lemon thing. Heck, it's been so long since I've read those, what with having watched actual file footage of it happening..."

Bob stared at him stupified. "Well, can you make me a mild one. I need something hard, but I don't want to be drunk."

Joe smiled. "Coming right up. Keep filling out those forms, and you'll be good to go soon."

o--

"Soon" as it turned out, was several hours later. Joe had given him some little bitter bean that had healed up his writer's cramp and though it had been a long time since he had eaten anything, Bob was not really all that hungry.

"OK. I'm done." Bob said as he wrote his name on the last paper. "What was this about? Can't you pay people to fill this out?"

"Actually, nobody was willing to do this even for pay so we decided that all the bureaucracy was part of the punishment of offenders."

"PART!" Bob blurted standing up. "What's the rest?"

"You actually have a choice. Three year incarceration followed by a memory wipe concerning our existence..."

"Did you just say years?"

"Yes years..."

"What are my other options? Please, Lord, say that they aren't any worse."

"There's only one other choice. You become a Physics Police recruit."

"Become one of you! That sounds like the coolest job ever...!" Bob started to get excited, which quickly ended when he took another drink of his Gargle Blaster. Even 'mild', it was the strongest beverage he had ever consumed. "I could go and actually meet Batman or Luke Skywalker!"

"It's not all glamour. To get the good jobs you pretty much have to be on a Special Unit, of which there are currently only four."

"Oh... still. It doesn't sound like punishment to me. Who's the most famous person you've ever met."

Joe stifled a chuckle. "I've not gotten many good jobs, but I guess it would have to be Zaphod Beeblebrox. After all, he was the president of the galaxy for a while."

"Impressive. Um, about earlier... You said this building came in pink? Where did it come _from_?"

"This building is older than most universes. Particles in the walls and floor have been dated at approximately 500 billion years old, give or take. We don't know who built it or why. A few thousand years ago, the founders of the Physics Police came from an unknown universe. Although many of the records were destroyed during their journey, those that survive indicate that it was a peaceful place, possessing the technology to travel beyond the speed of light, cure all disease and build incredibly stable worm holes. We use much their technology to this day. Of course I'm too cynical to buy into the 'cure all disease' part..."

"Why did they leave?"

"Apparently, they were fleeing a tyrannical regime of immense power. Upon arriving, they destroyed all data involving the coordinates of their home dimension."

"They traveled to another dimension, then they made sure they couldn't go back. Why?"

"Don't say dimension. It's commonly used, but protocols prefer the term "universe" so as not to get confused with the fourth and fifth dimensions, which are planes of existence rather than alternate realities."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I'm getting to it... They made sure they couldn't return to ensure that future generations wouldn't destroy themselves attempting to battle the invaders. According to legend, the tyrants came from a realm beyond our ability to find. Thus, having seen the ravages that had been wrought on their home by invaders from another universe, they pledged to stop it from happening elsewhere. Thus the Physics Police were formed. Unfortunately, we are only the second most powerful mortal force in all creation.

"And the first is?" Bob asked.

"The IRS, of course."

Bob laughed. "You had me going..."

"That wasn't a joke, kid."

Bob stared at him for a moment, not knowing whether to take him seriously. "OK, enough history. You said that fiction was mostly real... So what fiction isn't...?"

"I'll tell you when you're older." replied Joe.

**0000**

The fields of Jurai spread out in front of him and John, the Physics Police's second Ultimate Warrior, stood in direct opposition to his foe: himself. Or rather, himself from another universe in which he was evil.

"I don't know why you brought those two to this dimension, Join, but you shouldn't have. You have an interdimensional travel liscence, but the Joker and Majin Vegeta certainly don't."

"Why did we come here again?" the Batman's arch nemesis asked the spiky haired evil Saiyan Prince next to him.

"I came because he promised me a battle far more satisfying than with that clown Kakarot."

"Who?" Joker asked.

"My rival and most hated enemy. I recently defeated him in a fight and was going to go kill a demon... it's complicated... and then he showed up and... well you were there. Why did he take a weakling human like you with him?"

"Weakling? Honestly, my vertically challenged friend, he only offered me the chance to watch a thousand worlds die, and I thought it sounded like fun, so I tagged along."

"You're truly insane," Vegeta said.

"Thank you."

Little did the duo of maniacs know that the real reason Join had brought them there was two fold. One, he did it to draw out his alter ego from the Physics Police home dimension, John in order to destroy him. The other was that the quantum instability his vortexes had caused was essential in what he had planned: the fusion of the Jurais of 1000 different universes! It would be the CRISIS ON INFINITE JURAIs! Join cackled, throwing his head back.

"Dude, must you be so cliché?" John bit out. "I hope the personality karma gave all that cliché to someone else in my dimension, because I don't want to be so pathetic. What were you laughing at anyway?"

"My evil plot, of course. You have been selfless and good long enough, John, and it's time I took over and subdued your life!" He cackled again. Then, Join pulled a small device that looked like a pair of headphones with a starfish lodged in them and pressed an ominous red button on top.

Suddenly, the sky began to twist and bulge in thousands of different places. "What have you done?" John asked.

"The residual distortions from the wormholes to the DC and Dragonball universes have weakened the fabric of reality in the Tenchi reality cluster! Now thousands of Jurais will converge around this spot and empower me with all their energy!"

"This could be a problem," John sighed.

**0000**

Meanwhile, with time being relative, in those few minutes that had passed in Tenchi dimension TG-3S-8473-TM, half a day had passed in Physics Police headquarters.

"So I have to wear pink! Yeesh. What is it with this place and blends of red and white?" Bob stepped behind a cubicle divider to hide his get up, which resembled a Star Trek original series uniform, but was a bright pink.

"It tests your mettle. The pink drives away a lot of newbies who aren't really committed to the job, as I hope you'll prove to be. I've had enough fuel for my sarcasm these last few months, what with Buffy being canceled and all."

Bob sighed. "Fine. Fine. I'll play this game. What's next?"

"We train."

"Oh, sounds good. You get to train me?"

"Yeah. Our tests have indicated that something in the Microwave altered your physical structure to make you a prime candidate for both Force and _ki_ training, or should I call it chi. It is bodily energy that many universes..."

"Most of them anime," Bob muttered, yet again annoyed by Chaltab's continued forcing of him into such situations.

"...use for fighting, Yes. Anyway, before we go, you're officially older. Now about what fiction isn't actual reality. Well, you can rest assured that _The OC_ isn't. Pornography isn't. If there was a universe that acted like those 'films' would probably self destruct from lack of intelligence."

"So other than _The OC_ and... adult films, all fiction is real?" Bob asked aghast.

"Yes. Except for fan fiction," replied Joe.

Bob arched an eyebrow. "But that would mean..."

Joe put his hand over Bob's mouth."Don't even think about it."

"Why not?"

"Just don't." Joe glanced at a orange-shirted ensign with a passing resemblance to Ashton Kutcher. "Hanson, get over here." The young man came. "Ensign Hanson, consider the fact that you're in a fan fiction."

"The fact that I'm in a fanfic? OK... I am in a fan fiction. Fan fiction is not real, therefore..." POOF!

Suddenly, the ensign disappeared in a puff of smoke and confetti, his orange jumpsuit falling to the ground.

"That's why we don't think about it." Joe said evenly.

"Oh. Gotcha."

**0000**

Back in Universe TG-3S-8473-TM, John and Join were trading blows while Vegeta and the Joker looked on in curiosity. And wondering why exactly had Join needed them?

Suddenly, a few more of the spacial vortexes spewed their contents into the space above Jurai, as more and more universes merged, making Join stronger. "You can never win, John!"

"Cliches. More and more cliches. My _non-deity higher being_, Join! You're like a walking fountain of them."

The two clashed again, John punching Join in the face, and Join returning the blow to the stomach. The ground cratered around them due to the force of their blows. Join kicked and missed John returned with a punch intended for Join's lower spine, but missed and hit him below the belt, causing the enraged and now partially emasculated Juraian to go flying into the side of a cliff face. But the villain jumped right back up, and as more Jurais fell into the solar system, and gravity became increasingly ambiguous, Join drew more and more on the power the Jurai trees contained, beefing up.

"Oh, Belgium," John swore. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to resort to this. It's an oldie to be sure, but it's a goody." John cupped his hands at his waist. "Ka-me..." And a ball of energy formed in his hand. "Ha-meeee..." The ball of destructive light grew bigger and began wild fluctuations.

"DIE!" Join yelled as a massive pink energy beam flew from his hands.

"HAAA!" John countered with a stream of brilliant blue power, and the two opposing attacks collided somewhere in between, with a satisfying**_ KRAKOOOM! _**

"I'm glad I came here now," Majin Vegeta said. "Whichever of those clowns wins, I will challenge the victor and show him the true meaning of power."

"Must you keep using 'clowns' as an insult?" Joker looked over at him, his eyes going from gleeful to serious. " I find it offensive."

"Right. You would."

Suddenly, the powers of the two combatants flared and the beams of light fused into one massive explosion with another satisfying **_KRAKOOM._**

"Oh my!" Joker yelled. "This is... STUPENDESS! Oh, **_WOW_**, look at the show!"

"Idiot," Vegeta cursed.

**0000**

For what it's worth, Bob was a good student, despite rejecting most of his chi exercises based on their anime origins. He liked blasters and was a fairly proficient shot, and his connection to the Force was developing quite nicely, especially for someone being, as Yoda would say, "Too old."

Not that Bob considered himself old, just that... he respected Star Wars canon, apparently more than Joe did. But that mattered little, because one had to be proficient in some form of supernatural self defense before getting a Physics Police field job.

The basic training was two days in a Hyperbolic Time Chamber, which equated to two years inside it. Yeah, Bob felt pretty invincible by the time he came out.

**0000**

Ironically for John, those two days that had become years had passed as a mere two hours and four minutes for him, and he was quite honestly becoming winded and tired of his fight with Join. Both kept getting the upper hand, then loosing it again, in a viscous cycle (that had eventually left both Joker and Majin Vegeta quite board)...

"Funny," John sighed. "You have all the power of 100 Jurais and you still cannot beat me."

Suddenly, as if some cruel manipulator of fate was secretly pulling the strings, the other 900 dimensions spat up their Jurais, making there 1000 semi-identical planets all within spitting distance of each other.

"This could be bad. Then again, unlike my fellow Physics Cop, Phil, the fact that I'm an Ultimate Warrior was not kept secret from me... and I _do_ have my Super Saiyan license."

I suppose this would be a good time to give some back ground on the UWP—the Ultimate Warrior Project. Physics Police geneticists had decided that they needed to combat a growing threat, and that was the rise of superhumans with dimension hopping abilities or technology. So they had engineered a group of then-unborn children to have the DNA of some of the strongest races in the known multi verse. This was primarily in the form of Saiyan DNA, as Kryptionian DNA proved unstable and only small portion was allowed.

John happened to be a mixture of human, Juraian, and Saiyan, along with a few Tamaranian genes, which unfortunately rejected and killed the applied midichlorians that were supposed to have given John Force-sensitivity. But in John's humble opinion, that didn't really matter.

John threw his head back and screamed, his hair flashing from it's dark brown color to a platinum blond, his eyes lost their pupils and became sold teal circles. He was now Super Saiyan John. (SSJ for short.)

"Masenko!" John yelled, hurling the red ball of light at Join. It exploded around him and John plowed headlong into the smoke, finding his enemy and...

Getting caught by the throat in a giant fist. Unable to connect with his punch, John had been grabbed by an unscathed Join. "That's why they always wait for the smoke to clear in the cartoons, do-gooder."

Displaying his knack for cliché once more, Join, rather than crushing John's trachea while he had the chance, hurled him at the ground. John crashed through the surface and skidded about fifty yards, digging a trench as he went, before a rock painfully stopped his momentum.

"Now what did you call that attack again?" Join yelled. "BA-SINK-OH!" And the same ball of energy, tinged purple by Join's clichéd evil formed in his hands. He hurled it at John, hoping this would end this fight that had gone on for far too long.

"It's Masenko, you idiot." John muttered, "MA-senko. Is it really that hard to distinguish between an M and a B?" No, this was no time to be a Grammar Nazi... John decided upon releasing his special attack. It was about time he gave it a field test. Raising both hands, John started to form a Masenko again, but instead of throwing a ball, he brought the red energy down to his waist and powered up another very different kind of attack.

"MA-SEN-RYU-KEN!" He yelled, and the energy of the Masenko and Dragon Fist combined, making a lethal power drill out of his body, which he hurled at Join and his blast. Drilling through the mis-named "Basinko" attack, John pistoned his fist back and let Join have it. The blow resulted in yet another satisfying **_KRAKOOM, (actually, some might say it was a little closer to a KRAKOW!) _**followed by a bloody, injured Join falling to the ground of one of the Jurais, and a severely exhausted John landing in front of him.

0000

"Audit Gun?" Joe went over the list.

"Check," Bob replied.

"Reality Checker?"

"Check, no pun intended."

Joe glanced at the operator. "Alright Sam, we're ready to go. Beam us in..."

And with that, Joe and Bob were teleported to TG-3S-8473-TM...

* * *

In the Tenchi anime series, the Tree's of the planet Jurai give power boosts to Juraian fighters. 

A free bonus no-prize to anyone who can tell me where the Joker's "STUPENDESS" quote comes from.

Masenryuken is a cross between Masenko (Demon Blast) and Ryu-Ken (Dragon Fist)


	3. Infinite Exposition

**The Symphony of the Physics Police**

**Chapter 3: Infinite Exposition**

Though it had been two years for him, Bob found himself reliving his first two trips through the void between dimensions as he was beamed, this time not so unceremoniously, into a place where chaos was quickly gaining footing.

Now, a few words, before the action, about Order and Chaos—the two fundamental elements of the universe.

Neither can prevail over the other, or the universe will end. Should Order reign, then all time would freeze because time and change are one in the same. But should Chaos gain the upper hand, then all existence would be a murky mess. What is a Ford Prefect one minute could be Trigon the Terrible in the very next.

This is the goal and eternal motivation of the Physics Police. That is, to keep balance between Order and Chaos. Anytime the laws of physics are broken, more chaos is generated. And nothing generates more chaos than traveling between dimensions improperly (other than young children.)

Of course, all of this Joe had explained to Bob during their two years in the Time Chamber, and Bob had come to accept it as obvious. He still, however, refused to train himself and learn to wield his _ki _or _chi_ energy. Therefore, an alternative method had been taken.

"This is a what?" Bob had asked Joe.

"It's called a _Ghost Portal_."

"And what does it do?"

"Well," Joe said, "Its primary function is to produce superheroes with ghost powers. It also has an auxiliary function of serving as a gateway to the world of the dead."

Bob had just stared at Joe.

"You want me to walk into a portal that will lead me to the realms of the dead?"

"Not while it's on," Joe told him.

"What good will it do off?"

"Well, we turn it on while you're in it," Joe replied.

"WHILE I'M IN IT!" Bob's eyes grew three sizes and his brow fell to indicate a level of indignation that Joe had seen far too many times before. Bob clearly had been frustrated and had wanted to injure somebody. Joe had seen it in Bob's eyes.

He loved it.

"Yes. While you're in it." Joe's smile had been sadistic.

"What good will that do?"

"That's how it makes superheroes. Just trust me on this, will you?"

In the end, Bob had reluctantly agreed to stand in the middle of the high-tech device. "Now what?"

"There should be an 'on switch' inside it."

"What kind of idiot puts their on switch INSIDE the machine?" Bob had scanned the walls, quickly finding the green button labeled _on_.

"I plead the fifth," Joe had said, glancing at the rather large man in an orange jumpsuit who had built the machine. He had looked like he enjoyed fudge. Lots of fudge.

Bob, against his better judgment, had depressed the button with his right pinky finger. To this day, nobody knows why he used that particular finger, but if the answer is ever found, it might give us some profound insight into Bob's character.

Or maybe he was just scared out of his mind to use an important finger. You decide.

After the button was fully depressed, the portal's gears had begun to spin, and several panels had lit up. And Bob had screamed and howled as ghost energy was literally written onto his DNA...

**0000**

In Universe TG-3S-8473-TM, John was busy getting his butt handed to him by Majin Vegeta, the prince of the Saiyans who was now converted once again to the side of evil by Babadi's magic spell.

John flew up and shot down some energy beams, but they missed their mark and went flying off into the ground, almost vaporizing the Joker. "That was a close one!" yelled the murderous clown. "Watch where you're dodging those things!"

"The Prince of the Saiyans will never fall to a weakling such as your self," Vegeta told him.

"I'm a Saiyan too, you know. We're like cousi—" But before John could finish the simile, Vegeta punched him in the mouth and sent him flying into a nearby rock face, which crumbled under the impact.

"Pathetic. You're even more of a clown than that clown over there," Vegeta motioned his head towards Joker.

"I resemble that remark," Joker quipped.

Majin Vegeta landed and, with a flick of his wrist, blasted away the rubble that had piled around John. The Physics Cop stood up, bloodied and weary from the fight.

"You _are_ another one of those Physics Police do-gooders," Vegeta realized suddenly. "Well, I'll have you know, that Audit Gun of yours won't work this time. Bulma had me cut off from the Brief family fortune when I blew up the Tenkaichi Budokai stadium and killed all those people."

_I hope, _Vegeta added in thought only.

"What about THIS!" John jerked out his reality checker, a device that, when used, would strictly enforce all the laws of physics (not including Murphy's Law and the Law of Probable Desirability)...

It would normally prevent anyone, Physics Police and civilian alike, from doing anything that violated the basic tenets of the universe. Practically, it would negate Vegeta's considerably fighting power and make him nothing but an ordinary, albeit extremely spikey-haired, individual.

Unfortunately for John, Vegeta had experienced this before, and as soon as he reached for it, Vegeta blasted it out of his hand.

**_SSKRWW!_** The charred plastic and metal fell to the floor.

"Ah, crud." John cursed.

Vegeta charged at him, his fist drawn back and glowing with energy...

Suddenly,the smell of ozone wafted through the air, and a small red door opened up. And Joe blurred out, slamming into Vegeta, drilling several fists into his abdomen and face, and kicking him into a conveniently placed boulder.

Before the portal closed, it also spat out another humanoid figure that John didn't recognize.

"Hey, Joe! How's it been buddy? And what the kriff took you so fracking long?"

"I had to train the new recruit here," Joe answered. He thumbed towards Bob. "John, meet Bob; Bob, John."

The un-introduced shook hands.

Then Joe said, "You look rather beat to a pulp."

"Oh, really?" John's voice was thick with the sarcasm one speaks with when another has spoken the painfully obvious.

Again, Joe loved it. Not that he didn't care for John; quite the contrary. John was probably his best friend. But that didn't stop Joe from enjoying annoying the crap out of him anymore than Joe _loved_ to annoy the rest of creation.

"Second Wind, then?"

"Sure," John said.

"What's _second wind_?" Bob asked.

"Stand back."

Bob complied, and Joe and John stood side by side. Joe raised his hand, and in it appeared a small blue flame, that he hurled outward—and it began to swirl like a tornado, consuming both John and Joe, and lifting them off the ground. A few flashes of light and some fading wisps later, both landed. Joe looked a bit more fatigued; John's wounds were mostly gone.

"It's a healing technique. I use a bit of my _chi _to realign the physical structures of our bodies. If I use too much, I pass out or die." Joe shrugged and stretched a minute. "And I run the risk of realigning his body to be _exactly_ like mine. Of course, I'd need a power boost of more than 10000 times my current level for that to happen, so there's nothing to worry about." After a beat, Joe added ,"Except me dying, of course."

Majin Vegeta staggered to his feet and shrugged off his pain. "I will not be defeated so easily!"

"Let's finish this," John said. He and Joe assumed a wide stance and cupped their hands together.

"Makankomeha?" Joe asked?

"Sure," John said.

"MA-KAN-KO-ME-HAA!" Joe and John forced their hands together simultaneously, releasing the combined distinctiveness of the Kamehameha wave and Piccolo's Makankosappo (AKA _Special Beam Cannon_, to you dubbies out there)...

The powerful corkscrewing wave/beam slammed into Majin Vegeta and consumed him, blasting him back into the remains of the boulder and exploding. When he fell the the ground, he was almost, but not quite, completely unconscious.

"Will I learn to do that?" An amazed Bob gaped.

"Sure you will," Joe replied. "Now go ghost and possess that guy before he passes out. You can't overshadow the unconscious."

"Right," Bob said. "I'm _FEELING PHANTOM!" _

White rings encircled Bob, and suddenly, a negative image of what he'd been wearing when he was zapped by the ghost portal materialized on his body—a rather superheroey get up with a short cape, a spandex suit, and white mask that was now black. His eyes also transformed from their natural grey to glowing green.

"Well," John smirked. "I have to admit, he's got the look. But_, Zarquon_, he needs to work on that Battle Cry. It's painfully hilarious."

Bob's body suddenly became see-through and he entered Majin Vegeta, and stood up.

"Better than Magically Delicious," Joe joked. It was an inside joke between him and John, involving the horrors Joe had experienced living in the Lucky Charms fandom for more than a year when his communicator had been destroyed by a shooting star marshmallow. Let's just say that "Not Work Safe" doesn't even BEGIN to describe it.

"Can we get this over with?" the Saiyan prince said in Bob's voice.

"Sure, Sure," Joe sighed. He removed a small communicator from his belt. "Yo, Sammy," he said. "Make us a portal out of here."

"Sure thing," the voice replied.

Bob's confiscated Saiyan nostrils detected the smell of ozone, and once again the perfectly round red hole in reality made itself visible.

"What about the Joker and Join?" John suddenly asked.

"We'll have to split these dimensions back up anyway," Joe said. "They should go back to the right places when we do."

"Right. I knew that," John lied.

And then the three disappeared into the portal.

**0000**

John, Joe, and Bob arrived back at the Physics Police headquarters shortly after departing Universe TG-3S-8473-TM, and quickly reset the transporter to heal and then beam Majin Vegeta back to his home dimension.

Unfortunately, it was soon discovered that what his quantum signature indicated was his home dimension wasn't nearly far enough along timeline-wise for Majin Vegeta to even exist. In fact, if John, Sam, and Joe were to be believed, another Physics Cop named Phil was already at that very moment confronting that very version of Vegeta in a Pokemon Universe.

"What's that mean?" Bob asked.

"It means that he's also from the future in addition to being out of place," John explained. "That is how he knew what my reality checker was."

"Can we fix that?" asked Bob?

"Of course, but now we have to readjust the fourth dimension setting on the transporter, said Sam. "Sam pushed a few buttons and then said, "Done."

Vegeta disappeared in a blue beam.

"Now to separate the Universes that Join fused," Joe said.

"How?" Bob inquired. He inquired a lot.

Joe sighed deeply. "We _really_ need to invest in some sort of training programs. Recruiting offenders just tends to lead to paragraph after paragraph of exposition."

"Yeah," said John, "but without this exposition, nothing will make sense to the readers."

**_FOURTH WALL UP, PEOPLE!_** A voice boomed from above.

"Sorry," John and Joe said in unison.

"Was that... the Author?" Bob blinked.

"As I was about to say," John interjected, "the answer to you question is simple: tachyons."

"Tachyons?"

"Yes. Tachyons. Any time you have a spacial anomaly, a temporal vortex—anything that cant' be fixed with duct tape can be fixed with Tachyons. A few years ago, Marvel and DC universes fused together into an Amalgam universe. How'd we fix that? Tachyons."

Sam got done prepping a device in the corner near what looked like a Stargate.

**0000**

Now, before I continue, a word about Sam. Sam was a Russian man in his mid twenties, about five-foot-nine. He had no hair on his head and wore a small hat that didn't really manage to cover up his baldness. A small mustache framed his lower face. However, the most striking and noticeable feature about Sam was that he was a cyborg.

Not just a person with cybernetic implants, mind you. Most of his body was metal, made of a combination of Durasteel and Plasteel, and capable of lifting up to twenty metric tons in normal gravity.

**0000**

The tachyon cannon that Sam set up finished warming up.

"Excuse me, if you don't mind me asking," Bob said, "But how did you become a cyborg?"

Sam flushed. His accent was not thick when he said, "I'm really rather embarrassed to say."

The four men continued on in silence.(They weren't the only ones in the room, mind, but they were the only one working on the case this fic has been discussing so far.) The gate opened, and Bob asked yet another question.

"What's that?"

"An interdimensional viewer. It displays only the first and second dimensions of the target universe or universes and let's us administer Tachyons to them uniformly." Sam got finished with his last minute adjustments, and fired the cannon at the portal.

The universes broke apart, and, as predicted, the anti-chaos feedback of the Jurais returning to their own home universes also blasted Join and Joker to their proper places.

"Talk about convenient plot devices," Bob smirked.

**_AHEM!_** Bellowed the voice from earlier.

"Being silent," whispered Bob.

**0000**

Three days later, Bob and Joe were busy betting on Pazaak games in Javyar's cantina in the lower city of the planet Taris. "I'll raise you 250 credits," Bob said, studying his hand. He had gotten quite good at the ancient form of Sabaac played 4000 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire. As long as the Sith armies didn't take interest in his probably odd life-signs, he would be safe.

Gelrood, Bob's opponent looked up. "You're testing you luck, child."

Bob smirked. He had a zero, a two, and a three—an Idiot's Array. The object of the game was to reach 23, much like modern Earth's blackjack. And only an idiot would think a 0, a 2, and a 3 made 23... Which by some odd logic meant the cards automatically won.

Bob laid his hand down. "Ha!"

"What kind of idiot are you?" Gelrood asked. He placed his cards on the table as well, and revealed a nine and a ten—nineteen. "You have just _five _and you bet _that much_?"

"Bob!" Joe cut in, "You moron! There is no Idiot's Array in Pazaak. That's only in Sabaac."

Bob's eyes shot wide as saucers. "Ah, stang. I forgot."

"_Stang _isn't a swear word in this era, either," Joe whispered. "It's a brand name of backwash. I'll have to explain you you how exactly the obscenity of that word came about some time. Terribly funny story, really..."

Just then, Bob and Joe felt their Physics Police com links buzz within their pockets.

"What now?" Joe asked Sam.

"We have trouble. Someone has illegally jumped into the Universe P3-TN-8439-FR... It's a Futurama universe. I don't have any details other than that the rip is really clean. We might be dealing with a minor deity here."

"This place is really crowded because of the Sith Quarantine," Bob said. "You'd better make the portal somewhere inconspicuous."

"It's in the Black Vulkar base," replied Sam.

"Good. We'll be right there..."

By the time they made it to the portal, (which had inadvertently been opened in a locked storage room within the Vulkar base) Joe and Bob had decided that Revan's job would be considerably easier in this dimension...

**0000**

"We're ready, Sam," Joe confirmed.

"Alrighty, then." Sam chuckled. "Fasten your seat belts and prepare to enter the year 3000!"

"Where did the foreign object land?" Bob asked as Sam readied the transporter.

"New New York.

"Then I'll get to meet Bender! YES!" Bob said gleefully.

Of course, if Bob had been conscious of the Law of Probable Desirability, he might not have been so happy about that...

**0000**

The _Physics Police Personal Handbook_ defines the **Law of Probable Desirability **as follows:

_The probability of an expected outcome is the multiplicative inverse of it's level of desirability, unless the containing story is within five-to ten seconds of it's climax. Then the law is either reversed or negated entirely depending on the inherent reality factory of the given universe._


	4. The Futurama is NOW!

**The Symphony of the Physics Police  
Chapter Four: The Futurama is NOW!**

_Flash._

_Bang_, _**boom!**_

And suddenly, the entire world was spinning, end over end, escaping that reality in a last ditch effort to avoid annihilation. All because of that child Wally West. All because of the Flash.

To think, the great Brainiac defeated by a child—he would not allow it! And that is why he had fled, using what energy he could muster to send a part of himself into another universe. Or had that energy come from the fists of the one moving at the speed of light? No matter.

He was here now, and he had to move on. Earth was Earth, after all, whenever and whatever dimension it was in.

Where he had ended up was rather odd. It looked vaguely like New York City, but it had far greater level of technology than Earth cities possessed. And he could tell that with nothing more than sensors. The nanomachines throughout his being slowly but surely built an eye. He could look around now, and saw that he had arrived near a body of water, a bay, it seemed to be, and on the other side of his landing site was the rear end of a red building..

Brainiac knew he wouldn't have much of a chance just lying there, but he couldn't do anything just yet, so he turned on his vast mind and began to think, while his nanomachines began to build him a method of transportation.

Then, the door on the red building burst open, and a metallic automaton, a humanoid, walked out.

"Ugh. They make me so mad some times!" complained Bender, grabbing a beer from his innards and chugging it. "Going off to one of Farnsworth's demonstrations and leaving me here without Fry and bored out of my wasted mind." Bender chugged another beer, and lit a cigar, and then began to skip rocks he had removed from his chest cavity, trying to hit the pelicans in the bay for fun. "Hah! Two points!"

So focused was the drunken robot, that he did not notice the small, spider-like creature behind him until it was two inches from his foot. Bender whirled around, and saw the small spider android that Brainiac had become. He would have arched an eyebrow if he had them.

"Who are you?" he said. "Do you want to share a beer? Well HAH! You can't. These here are all mine!" Bender thumped his chest with his hand, and a hollow metallic ding reached Brainiac's audio receptors.

"Interesting," Brainiac said. "A robot that consumes intoxicating substances. I will have to study this technology from the inside out, and remove the worthless applications. Then I can turn the practicalities of organic fuel to other uses."

"What?" Bender said. "Hey, I don't eat food. I just drink beer for the buzz!" He took another puff on his cigar. "What can I do ya for? Seriously, hurry up. Spit it out; I want to go back to killing pelicans."

"I require… your body!" Braniac said, menacingly, though to all the wrong effects.

" NO!" Bender blurted, backing up. "I ain't THAT kind of robot, you pervert!"

Brainiac did not answer, but moved closer, and suddenly, a thought occurred to Bender…. _He was tiny! _Why should Bender be afraid of a little spider-drone, even if it did talk in a creepy voice…

"You think you can take me, little man?" Bender said, moving into a 'fighting' stance, and pumping his fists. "Bring it on."

Brainiac leapt towards Bender, but was snatched out of the air by Bender's hand. "Ha! You're lame!"

"Please. Put me down you interfere with my mission."

"I could probably make some good money off of you," Bender said gleefully. "After I finish with the pelicans, you and I have a date to the pawnshop!" With that, Bender opened his chest cavity one last time and stuck Brainiac inside…

Big mistake…

Immediately, Brainiac sent out his nanobots, and clawed upward into Bender's head, interfacing with his neural network and overriding his program.

"If you think you're going to override me, then you can kiss my shiny metal AAAUGHUGH!"

The robot began to twitch uncontrollably, spasming in place as the two personas warred inside him. The machine staggered backwards, smashing through the door of the Planet Express building and tore through the lower floors, finally collapsing on the ground in the kitchen…

**oooo**

Space itself tore open high above New New York, and Bob and Joe burst through the barrier between realities. It was just as Bob had imagined!

"I can't believe it! We're really in New New York!"

"You've seen Taris and find this amazing?"

"That city planet was nice, but I never really got into Knights of the Old Republic. THIS on the other hand… it's like stepping into a fantasy."

"You do realize that this place isn't that great, right?" Joe grabbed Bob by the far shoulder and spun him around to look him in the eye. "Didn't you watch the show? Suicide booths, murder casually discussed, heads of dead people as president? Pay attention. Things make SEEM cool on the show, movie, book, whatever. But when you're actually here, in the thick of it, there are times where it's anything but fun."

Bob thought it over for a moment, and nodded. "I guess if Darth Vader was there, I wouldn't have enjoyed being in Star Wars so much."

"If Darth Vader were there, you'd be dead. Now let's go. We have a job to do and I want to get back in time to watch LOST."

Bob rolled his eyes at Joe's network TV obsessions, but blasted downwards after him anyway, drawing on his ghost powers for most of his propulsion.

By the time the two physics police got to the site of the disturbance, which just so happened to be the Planet Express building, whatever had arrived was long gone, and had apparently taken Bender with. The evidence, including residual tachyon in the atmosphere as well as a Bender shaped hole in several of the walls of the building, lent to the theory that what ever it was had attacked Bender at close range, perhaps even from the inside out.

Based on the way the debris had fallen, Joe had determined that Bender had entered through the broken back door and exited through the wall in the front room after a struggle in the kitchen. Where he had gone was anyone's guess.

"We have no leads. I can't find anything to tell us where the rest of the Express crew is. All of Farnsworth's technology is gone." Joe leaned against a wall.

Bob sighed, and went into the kitchen. He pulled out his communicator and started to contact Sam, when he realized that there was a note lying on the counter. He picked it up and read:

_Bender,_

_Went to Farnsworth's new technology demonstration at pier 41. Be back soon. Not that I wanted to go, of course, but Leela promised she'd take me to see Charlie's Angels LXVII if I helped out._

_-Fry._

Well, that was easy. Sometimes Bob wondered if it was Joe's eyesight or his cynicism that made him so blind to the obvious.

"Hey, Joe," Bob said, returning to the front room. "I found this note."

"What? Let me see." Joe took the note and read it. "Where did you find this?"

"On what was left of the kitchen counter," Bob said. "You really ought to be more thorough."

Joe glared at him, but then got serious. "Come on. Bender probably went there if he'd read the note."

Joe and Bob blasted out of the hole Bender had made in the wall, and then blazed towards pier 41 on the opposite side of the city, dodging flying cars and billboards as the went. Bob mused that everything looked very accurate, which said a lot about the society that Futurama depicted. It was so strange to think that so much of what he used to consider comedy was actually happening to all these people…

Man, he hated it when life threw him a sucker punch like that. He LIKED laughing at their pain! How could he ever find Futurama funny again knowing that real people lived that way?

On second thought, what the heck. It's not like they were HIS people to worry about.

….Were they?

**oooo**

Bob would have worried more if he had known what exactly it was that Farnsworth was demonstrating that night at the otherwise abandoned warehouse on the pier.

"Man," said Fry, "this is original. An abandoned warehouse on a pier. Never heard that one before." His sarcasm was almost, but not quite, obvious.

"Just be thankful that Chaltab is treating us as disrespectfully as we're treated in the show itself," said Leela, her eye looking rather dull. "He could be writing another bad romance between us, or sending me a one-eyed Gary Stu boyfriend,"

"I never thought of that," said Fry.

"Attention, Attention!" came the voice of Professor Farnsworth as he stepped out from behind his machines. "I am ready to start my experiment now. Zoidberg, the sheets, please."

The crablike alien complied, removing the sheets that covered Farnsworth's computer, and the enormous one along the wall. What was on the other side was like a Stargate, a massive circle with conduits of something or another running into it.

It was revealed to some enthusiastic_ oohs _and _ahhs_ from Fry, Zoidberg and Amy, but Leela's and Hermes' reactions were a bit more cynical. "That's it?" Hermes said. "Just another instantaneous matter transmitter. That is so 24th century, doctor."

"Oh, no," said Farnsworth. "This is not any mere portal generator. I attest to you today that his device will break down the Fourth Wall itself!"

"But we can do that with our words," Fry said. "I just did like two minutes ago."

"Yes Fry, but it would take someone far stupider than even you to tear it all down that way. It would take a million idiots led by someone who makes you look like Thomas Einstein. This way is much more efficient."

"How does it work?" Leela asked. "All your old theories about the fourth wall proved to be completely ridiculous."

"If I told you how it worked, I'd have to write you out of the show!" Farnsworth said, and then started laughing. "Oh, sorry. A little fourth wall humor there. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how it works. Leonardo Di Vinci's head did most of the designing; I just built the thing."

"Well," Leela admitted, "if a genius like Di Vinci's head designed it, then nothing could possibly go wrong."

Something went wrong anyway. Just that moment, the doors at the back of the warehouse burst open, and in dashed Bender… but something about him was different.

Very different. For one, his head was now encased in a smooth shell, and wires and metallic braces laced his body, and on his new head casing, there was a symbol of some sorts. It was made of three triangles, two spaced evenly from the center of Bender's head, and one below it, with a line from both lateral circles down to the bottom one, so that it made a 'v' shape.

"This assembly is terminated," he said. "Allow me access to this device you have constructed, and no harm will come to you."

"Over my dead body!" blurted Farnsworth.

"As you wish," said neo-Bender. He reached into his chest cavity, which now had a automatically sliding panel, and removed a plasma rifle.

"No!" Farnsworth dived behind the computer, even as Bender shot at him, and the beam continued until it slammed into that terminal. The computer melted, but the energy of the rifle somehow tripped the activation mechanism…

The portal turned on!

"Soon the entire multiverse will be mine," 'Bender' said, leaping onto the ramp that led into the portal. Tiny nano machines leaked out from all-over his metallic body. "Antiquing your form of existence—this is my new purpose." And with that, the nanomachines returned to Bender's body, and he disappeared through the portal.

"Bender!" Fry ran towards the portal, but in a sudden flash, it closed, and then collapsed.

"Jumping Jack-o-Lanterns!" exclaimed Hermes. "What in de' blue blanket of death was DAT?"

"Whatever it was," Leela said, "it wasn't Bender."

"How can you be sure? He's been known to do crazy random homicidal things before," Fry said.

"But 'antiquing' is Bender's least used word. He would _never_ talk that way, even if he had inexplicably become an evil genius despotic genius. Not that he wasn't the first two already."

"Good point," Fry answered. "I wonder what he meant by 'multiverse'…"

**oooo**

Not five minutes later, Bob and Joe finally found the warehouse and dashed in, just as the Planet Express crew was beginning to leave.

"Excuse me," Leela said, "but the demonstration has been cancelled."

"We're not here for the demonstration," said Joe. "We're with the Physics Police."

This seemed to alarm the professor. "Whatever it was, it wasn't me this time!"

"Sir," Bob tried, "you must understand—"

"I _already_ paid the fines! Now please leave me in peace!"

"Professor, do you know these people?" Leela inquired.

"Um, no! Of course not. Never met them in my life," Farnsworth lied.

"Er…" Bob didn't know what to say.

"Farnsworth here has been in trouble for violating interdimensional boundaries for several times in the past with that What If machine of his," Joe explained. "But we're not here for him tonight." Joe held out a half-smoked cigar. "You do know who this belongs to, correct?"

"That's one of Bender's cigars!" Fry blurted. "I know, because it has his initials on it." Fry pointed to the band around the cigar, which read _BBR_.

"Have you seen Bender lately?"

"Yes," said Leela. "He just came through here five minutes ago saying something about taking over the multiverse, but I don't think it was Bender. I think something was controlling him."

"You think right," Joe said. "We have reason to believe a malicious computer virus from another dimension has somehow taken over his body and the pathetic mess of code he called a mind."

Leela nodded, and then described the symbol on Bender's new head to Joe. And suddenly, Joe was worried. "This isn't good."

"That symbol sounds familiar," Bob agreed. "I take it you know—"

"Brainiac!" Joe blurted. "I should have known. He's secretly behind every thing bad that happens ever. He's the master-mind."

"Brainiac? The Superman villain?" Bob asked.

"By the description of the symbol, I'd say so. Specifically the version of Brainiac from PD-BT-33DM-DCA… The Detective Comics Animated Universe."

"Is that bad?"

"Bob, don't you pay attention? That version of Brainiac is powered by nanotechnology and CANNOT be destroyed unless every last piece of him is vaporized. This mission may be beyond us." Joe turned back to Leela. "Where did Bender go?"

"He attacked my computer and escaped through the portal," Farnsworth complained. "Then he broke that too!"

Joe glanced over, finally realizing that the heap of rubble on the far side of the room was. "Some sort of Stargate…" he ventured. He turned to Farnsworth, suddenly intense. "Where does it lead?"

"Uh…. I er..!" Farnsworth stammered.

"ANSWER ME!" Joe let his _ki_ flare, causing Farnsworth to back away.

Leela leaped to attack Joe, and Bob found himself forced to restrain her.

"Tell me where it leads," Joe repeated tersely, using what little telepathy he knew to pressure Farnsworth's mind.

"It is a portal to the other side of the forth wall!" Farnsworth blurted. Joe stepped back, and Farnsworth fell to the ground and pretended to cry. Or at least it sounded like he was pretending…

"This is bad," said Joe. "His darned law-breaking has let one of the most dangerous things in creation out into the multiverse at large."

Bob let go of Leela, who kicked him in the shin. Bob fought back for a bit, until Joe used the Vulcan nerve pinch on her and she passed out.

"What should we do?"

"We need to get back. We have to find out where he went, and stop him."

**oooo**

Back at the Physics Police HQ, Joe and Bob worked with Sam in a monitor room, reviewing tapes of interdimensional activity. The lines on the screens each represented timelines of different universes.

"Here," Sam said. "Look at this."

He pressed a button, and a blue line slid across the stage, then snapped back like an elastic band, but a thinner blue line, like a shadow of the first one, snapped back slower, slipping into the area of another line, a red one. Where they overlapped, there was a light purple.

"And this is supposed to show me what?" Bob asked.

"This point in time here coincides with the battle against Brainiac as seen in the Season Four finale of Justice League Unlimited."

"And," Joe picked up, "right as the Flash delivered the last blow to Brainiac, the first and second dimensions of the Futurama universe overlapped the third of the JLU Universe, somehow allowing Brainiac—probably supercharged by Speed Force energy—to slide out of his world and into New New York."

"I see," Bob said, though he didn't. "What about when he left? Can't you track him? I thought this computer monitored all inter-universal travel."

"It does," Sam said, "But whoever designed this machine was a genius on par with the Founder Race, because it left a slice so clean our sensors thought it was an official portal."

Joe gasped. "If Brainiac dissected that portal, then he can do that too! He can be and go anywhere, and the computer can't track it."

"I could recalibrate the sensors to detect only portals opened by the Physics Police, but…"

"But?" asked Joe.

Sam sighed. "There are so many of them, it would still being like searching for a needle in a haystack. Only with less hay."

Suddenly, an alarm started buzzing, and a new sub-window popped up, on the computer, an icon of a clock ticking fifteen minutes forward and suddenly jumping back with a jerk appeared.

"Groundhog Day?" Bob asked, apparently realizing that the icon indicated a temporal loop.

"Yeah, Groundhog Day. On Namek… It seems that a Dragon Ball Z universe was caught in a time loop on Christmas Eve 762 AD—the day Goku defeated Frieza."

"The day who defeated what?" Bob asked…

"Never mind. Let's just go find out what is causing it and fix it. Samir, my friend, open us a portal, and make sure the guys don't start the funeral I had planned for _Alias_ until I get back."

"Will do, Joe," replied Sam. "Good luck."

And with that, the two Police stepped into the teleporter and where beamed away to the planet Name.

And found more than a temporal loop awaiting them….


	5. Christmas Eve

**The Symphony of the Physics Police**

**Chapter Five: Christmas Eve**

Bob and Joe arrived on Planet Namek safely enough. Joe began their stay there by first removing a large scanner from his pocket. He scanned the area and then dropped a Capsule Corp capsule on the ground, on the small island where they landed, and from it a structure appeared, with what looked like a Chronosphere from the Commanded and Conquer Red Alert games protruding from the roof.

Bob paid little attention to this and used his ghost powers to fly up and look around the area. He quickly decided that irony was indeed a cosmic trait, as he noticed that all the grass on the planet was blue, yet the sky and the ocean were green. "Ha, ha," he thought aloud. "Hilarious. It's the pallet-swap planet."

"Don't knock what you don't understand," Joe shouted from the ground. Bob floated down, then Joe amended, "Well, except scat, M-PREG, murder, sadism, and monochronologistic meta-tropism. Those… feel free to knock 'till your heart is content."

"What is monowhatzit metawho?" Bob asked with a perplexed look on his face.

"Even if I explained it, you wouldn't understand. Nobody outside _the Interview With a Vampire _universe even believes in it anymore," Joe replied.

"Is that Chalts' way of taking a pot shot at Anne Rice?" Bob inquired?

"The first of many," Joe answered.

Bob sighed deeply. He had rather enjoyed that vampire movie with Allaya. Eventually, his thoughts returned to the task at hand, so he thumbed at the building Joe had removed from the capsule. "What's the frontier settlement for?"

"In missions like this we never know how long it will take to find and solve the problem. This building will act as a shelter for all our food and research, while _these_," Joe said, reaching for a pair of belts hanging on the wall of the base just inside the entrance, "are anchor belts that will allow us to retain any mental and physical changes that happen to us before the time loop restarts." He handed one to Bob and secured one around his own waist.

"What if we get impaled or something?"

"Just turn the belt off and the wound will vanish when time resets, as will all your memory of it."

Joe was beginning to develop a glint in his eye that Bob wasn't sure he trusted. "And considering we have as many loops as it takes to fix this problem…"

The next few paragraphs would normally, in a story like this, be used to explain and describe what our heroes were doing in all the time loops where they goofed off.

Unfortunately, this is old hat. It's been done by Groundhog Day. It's been done by Stargate SG1. It's been done by fanfic author Jedi-And. Doing it again would be tedious.

Furthermore, you must take into account the fact that there just _isn't much to do on Namek_. With all the inhabitants slain by Frieza and the Z-Senshi fighting the Kold Prince on the other side of the world, there was no real interaction to be had, no sports stadiums to visit, no golf clubs to use in inappropriate places, no superiors to act like a jackass in front of.

So describing these actions would really do nothing more than slow the story down and bore you to death.

After several loops, Joe and Bob realized this too, especially after Bob thought it would be a good idea to insult Frieza and got a hole drilled through his skull with a Death Beam, and thereby forgot the past loop entirely—for Joe, as promised, had deactivated Bob's belt and when time snapped back like a rubber band, it was as if nothing had gone wrong.

Though Bob did wake up to an earful he didn't rightfully deserve, considering he didn't really remember the notion or action of insulting Frieza…

Which brings us to this point: Bob and Joe both eventually began using some of the time to train their ghost and chi powers respectively, and this is where we pick up.

"Ka… Me… Ha…Me…. HA!" Joe shouted, pushing forward with his cupped hands. The ball of energy exploded into a massive blue-white beam of energy that arced towards Bob.

"Ecto-Blast!" Bob shouted. His posture was quite different. Instead of the deep stance Joe was in, Bob stood with his feet shoulder width apart, and instead of cupping his hands in proper Hadouken/Kamehameha form, he had them both extended directly out in front of him, locked completely straight.

Nevertheless, a green-white ball of power erupted from his hands as well, and an ectoplasmic energy trail followed after it.

Unfortunately for Bob, the collision of the two waves was akin to a speeding Lamborghini slamming into a lazily tossed basketball; Joe's wave instantly overpowered Bob's attack and both energies blasted towards Bob.

Bob gulped, quickly going intangible as the waves passed through him.

"Holy crap!" Bob blurted. "You could have fried me!"

"It wasn't enough to kill you," Joe replied. "I just wanted to make a point."

"What point?"

"That you need to train your chi powers. Bob, being half-ghost gives you some unique advantages. You could defeat Superman by jumping in his body and beating yourself up. But there are some things you can't overshadow, and sometimes the most practical course of action is a good old-fashioned beat down."

"Joe, you know how much I hate… anime.." Bob said weakly.

"Would you quit with that. Anime is just a medium the Japanese use to tell the stories. If Captain America had the power to throw a Kamehameha you'd be jumping all over the ability to learn it."

"…" said Bob.

"Exactly." Joe walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I know you're not the strongest. You'll never be a chi fighter on even my _esteemed_ caliber—" It was obvious the word _esteemed_ was being used sarcastically—"but you need something more. And you're just not strong enough in the Force for it to be your sole back up."

"Fine. Later. I'm sick of training," Bob said. "Let's go advance the plot some."

"Good idea," Joe said, glancing at the sky. It was midday on Namek. On a world with three suns, this meant that one sun was rising, one was setting, and one was at high noon. He then scanned the south, picking up a scouter and a copy of the DBZ manga…

"Alright," he said. "The dimensional anomaly that is causing the time loop is in this direction, but so is Frieza's ship. We're going to have to be very cautious. Fly with ghost power only."

"What about you? I've watched you enough to know that ki-flight at any decent speed causes that explosion of energy thing and that it can be detected."

"I'm going to fly the other way—hurl myself at the ground and miss."

"That actually works here?"

Joe shrugged. "I sort of brought a…somewhat illiegal… permit for it, considering the danger of this mission... Enough talk, let's go."

Joe jumped off the edge of the cliff towards the ocean, when suddenly, a fish jumping out of the water caught his eye and distracted him, and he immediately missed the sea and began flying…

Bob joined him in the air, and together they blasted towards the anomaly.

**

* * *

**

_Initiating primary program…_

_Booting…. Running primary diagnostics…_

_Done…_

_Analyzing surroundings…. _

_Trinary starsystem. O-Class planet. Heavily populated Oceans, significant lizard life on the larger islands. Few trees._

_Planetary database match. _Namek. _89 probability of match._

_Initiating secondary program…_

_Done... Motor functions online…_

_Initiating tertiary program…  
_

_Running final diagnostics_

_  
Sapience active. Unit designation: _

**_Ashe_**…

On a lonely hill, there rested a crumpled mechanical mass. But slowly, it stood, four legs supporting its light frame, making it resemble a sort of crab being. The droid's optical scanner blazed with scorn for everything it saw, and the desire to possess every last inch of it.

"We are Ashe," said the machine. "We shall consume all."

**

* * *

**

As Joe and Bob neared the indicated location of the anomaly, it became increasingly clear that the anomaly was _up_, rather than anywhere near the ground. And considering there were no true mountains on Namek, this was rather strange.

"What if it's being generated by something in space?" Bob asked.

"Well, my readings don't suggest it's _that_ high up," Joe said, letting his disappointment creep into his voice. "I hate high-altitudes. I don't know how Arthur Dent could stand having sex on the wing of an airplane."

Bob sighed. "Did you have to remind me of my least favorite part of the novels? The whole flight subplot was so stupid…"

"Sorry. I hated that part too, if it makes you feel any better. Which it probably does not. Nevertheless…"

"You don't want to go up there?"

"Well, no. But it seems up we have to go. If it _is_ in space, well, I brought a space ship along, we'll have to go back to the base, probably wait for the loop to run its course, then fly up there and hope that Frieza's men don't start shooting at us."

"You know how to lift the spirits, Joe," Bob said sarcastically.

So, up the duo went, ascending vertically until a very distinct circle appeared above them and gradually grew larger.

"What is it?" Bob asked?

"Well I'll be tortured by a Twi'lek," said Joe… "I think it's a Kami Sanctuary…"

"What?

"A sanctuary for the Kami of Namek. Literally, it means god, but they aren't really worshiped or anything. They function more like a Guardian of the Planet, making sure nothing mind-bogglingly awful happens, usually with little success. Unfortunately, no such god bothered to stop the creation of reality TV, so I'm not inclined to believe they exist outside this universe."

"Is it something like a System Lord from Stargate?" Bob asked.

"No. It's nothing at all like a system lord from Stargate.," Joe said, a nerve pulsing in his forehead.. "Never mind. It is not important why it's here; it's clear that the anomaly is coming from somewhere inside. Let's go."

The two flew up over the edge and landed atop the sanctuary which looked rather like the one on Earth—called Kami's Lookout by the uninformed—except that the aesthetic of the building was decidedly Namekian.

"I think I'm starting to have an idea of what happened." Joe blasted towards the ground, and Bob did likewise, following him into the building and through a maze of passages and stairwells until he came to a stop in front of him. Several minutes had passed by this time, and Bob's legs were beginning to ache from all the stairs.

In front of the duo was a massive gold-trimmed door, sheer white, and possessing ornate decorations. And in the middle there was a massive burn-hole, at least two feet in diameter.

"This explains it." Joe said. "There is a hole in the door to the Room of Spirit and Time."

"You mean like what we trained in before I went active?"

"Yes, Bob," Joe said with exasperation. "Here, use the Force…" Joe pointed to a piece of metal lying on the ground, a panel that had fallen from the wall because of disrepair. "And lift that over the hole in the door and I'll seal it shut."

"I'll try," Bob said.

"Do or do not. There is no try," Joe reminded him.

Bob shot him an annoyed glance and reached nervously into the frightening realm of the Force, gradually feeling his way towards the metal and picking it. It hovered towards the hole in the door, covering it completely.

Joe walked over to it and pointed both fingers at the edges of the panel. "I theorize that the hole caused a discontinuity between time here and time elsewhere on the planet. Gradually, it would get so bad that time would literally be jerked back to the point the build up started." A light purple beam burst from Joe's fingers, welding the panel to the door as he traced its contour.

"That's done," he said.

"But what could have made the big hole to begin with?"

"We're going to find out," Joe said, reaching over to a panel and commanding the door to slide open. "This place has obviously been abandoned for years and there is no record of it even existing, that I'm aware of…" Joe trailed off, gaping.

Bob turned to see what had caused Joe's mouth to fall hanging open, and to his surprise, there, hovering out in the middle of the Room of Spirit and Time, was a red portal, perfectly round, though strange blasts of red lighting arced from it to the surroundings.

Otherwise it looked just like a Physics Police portal.

"_Phrack_," Joe cursed. "Who ever did this knows how to travel."

Joe approached, Bob close behind. No energy field blasted them away or sucked them in so they got very close, and the door shut behind them.

"Where does it lead?"

"I can't tell from the analysis."

Bob arched an eyebrow. "Can you send a camera through it, see what's on the other end?"

Joe nodded. "That could anger someone on the other side, but as long as we aren't standing where we can be blasted through the portal, we should be okay… unless they send a swarm of tiny insectoid drones through that burrow into our skin and eat us alive from the inside out. Granted that's a worst case scenario. They might just come through themselves and shoot us."

"Whoopee," Bob said grimly.

Joe removed a small Capsule from his pocket and depressed the switch. It exploded into a POOF and when it was gone, there was a small screen with an antenna in his hand, and attached to it a small camera drone.

"Here goes nothing," he said, removing the camera drone and tossing it into the portal. A few seconds of static later, there was a bright flash on the screen and a setting materialized. It seemed the camera was on the ground, looking up at the ceiling of what appeared to be a warehouse.

_Suddenly, Phillip J. Fry entered the frame, looking at the camera directly, "Hey!" he said, "was this oddly high-tech looking camera lying around here before Bender went through the portal?"_

_Suddenly, Leela entered the frame as well. "No, Fry, it wasn't. Why don't you try touching it or waving like an idiot?"_

_"What if it's a bomb?" Fry asked, picking the camera up._

_"Then it will kill or maim one or all of us depending on how powerful it is," Leela answered in a completely casual tone._

_Suddenly, a loud thundering was heard at a large distance in the video, and Fry quickly turned around, holding the camera behind his back so that the disturbance could not be seen._

_Suddenly, Fry adjusted it so that it was pointing at Leela's chest while she was distracted._

"Typical," Joe muttered. By this time Bob had joined him viewing the screen and groaned in concurrence.

_Then, from the recording, Joe's voice came loud and clear, followed by Bob's..._

The two Physics Cops stared at the screen, blank looks on their faces... "Did I just here _us_?" Bob asked...

"Indeed you did," Joe said...

"But that means whatever made this portal was that THING, that fusion of Brainiac and Bender!"

"Holy buckets of crud!" Joe blurted. "_Kriff_ it all, you're right!" Joe tossed the screen down and removed a small device from his belt, a Tachyon emitter, and blasted the portal with it in a wide beam that narrowed to a laser-focus as the portal closed.

"Crud, Crud, Crud!" Joe hollered. "We have to go, yesterday!"

Joe darted towards the room's exit, and Bob followed. Bob was about to suggest that he phase them both through the door, but Joe suddenly blasted forward, his ki aura flaring, and blasted right through the panel he had just welded on!

Bob phased through himself and then shouted at Joe, "What the heck are you doing? What about the temporal distortion build up?"

"It's covered," he shouted back to Bob, flying up and breaking through the ceiling. He continued up through the sanctuary, Bob close behind, until they were both high above it looking down. Joe started to get a nosebleed.

"I told you I hate high-altitudes," he sighed.

Bob facepalmed. "Now what?"

"This place is abandoned, and as our little incursion here has demonstrated, is not much more than a security hazard to the denizens of this universe. Frieza is going to destroy the planet later today anyway." Joe cupped his hands behind him as if to prepare for a Kamehameha. "There's no harm in blasting the portal altogether now."

"If you say so," Bob ventured.

Suddenly, Joe's aura exploded into being, and then another explosion made it a bright, frightening red. "Five times Kaiyo-Ken should be plenty," he said. "KAME...HAME...HA!"

A column of sheer white energy exploded from Joe's hands as he pushed forward, and flew down into the sanctuary, blasting through the roof and into the very center of the building...

**_KRAKALOOOOOOM!_**

The entire sanctuary lit up in a massive ball of chi, shattered chards of metal and polished stone flying in ever which direction until there was nothing left but a massive, derelict basin floating in the air, and even that began to crumble...

Bob knew his jaw would have hit the floor had one been there to intercept it. "That was amazing!"

"It also probably alerted Frieza's men to our presence. Get ready for a fight." Joe removed a special Physics Police scouter from his belt and began looking around the horizon. "I see a very high-tech something-or-another moving that way," he said... "Towards, Frieza's ship, darn it all."

"If worse comes to worse I'll overshadow Frieza long enough for you to take down the metal dude."

"You have learned well, my young apprentice," Joe mocked. "Fine. We're off." And so the two blasted towards the ship...

**

* * *

**

The cold sterility of the ship was fitting, given the vessel's owner was named Frieza, the son of the great King Kold. Nevertheless, it was often unnerving for the lord's underlings, especially when one of them was tasked with giving him potentially disturbing news.

When Buki entered the throne chamber of the ship, he was **_very _**unnerved. "Lord Frieza," he said, trying to keep his voice even. He noticed that Frieza was admiring a hologram of his ancestor Lady Kalt, but he did not dare make any mention of this to his master's face.

"Yes?" said Frieza.

"The search for the Dragon Balls continues, though it has been so far unfruitful. We've been picking up several anomalous power readings over the past few days, and still no word from Dodoria or Zarbon…"

"I can only assume that they are dead," Frieza said with a sigh. "What of the search for Vegeta," Frieza asked.

Buki could offer know answer.

"But sir, there is some good news."

Frieza's eyes narrowed. "If you so much as** think** the word _Geico_, I'll kill you where you stand!"

"Sir," Buki said, "the Ginyu Force has contacted us, and they said that they will be here within the hour. There_ is_ one other, minor concern…"

Frieza arched an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"A while ago, we began detecting a very week power signature, apparently unrelated to the other signatures in the Namekian village or to Vegeta. Two minutes ago it suddenly flared up massively, reaching five times that of even Dodoria's… We fear…"

"You think _I_ cannot handle such a fighter?" Frieza barked.

Buki took a step back, sweatdropping profusely. "No, sire, that is not at all what I meant! I merely wished to keep Your Majesty from dirtying his hands with the work of a soldier, that is all!"

"Good," Frieza said in a way that made Buki feel not at all 'good'… "Now get out of my sight before I decide to send you the way of your predecessor."

Buki gulped, not wanting to suffer the fate of the last person to give Frieza bad news, and swiftly backed out of the room, leaving the master to his own business…

And quickly deciding that as soon as the Ginyu force got there with more ships, he was _gone_.

**

* * *

**

An hour later, things were bad. Very bad.

Because Joe and Bob had been flying and still not arrived this whole time, but had been tracking a massive energy struggle with power levels far higher than the good guys could muster for fifteen minutes. And it was taking place in the area around Frieza's ship.

Joe glanced over at Bob. "Remember that technique I taught you to make us fly faster?"

"The one that makes me really dizzy?" Bob asked.

"That's the one," Joe said.

"Unfortunately, I do," Bob confessed.

"We're doing it."

"Crud."

Concentrating, Joe and Bob focused their respective auras into a tunnel around themselves, gradually making it faster. Then the moved inward and let the two aura's touch. An explosion of energy suddenly surrounded them and they were jerked into a cyclone of energy, their speed increasing in a burst of wind and energy, sending them forward at thrice the speed or more than what they were traveling before.

Unfortunately, they arrived just in time to see Frieza explode into his final form way too early.

"What's going on?" Joe blurted.

"I'm afraid," Bob said, noticing the sky had gotten dark, and massive bolts of lighting had started arcing through the sky.

"It's the Dragon Balls… someone has summoned Porunga and is going to make a wish. That means the timeline is secure—for now. But what is attacking Frieza?"

Joe's question was answered when a small machine suddenly exploded forward towards the tyrant, blasting lasers at him and then attempting to drill a hole through his chest with one of its crab legs.

"Stay dead, you!" Frieza barked, raising his fingers. "DEATH BEAM!"

Suddenly the small crablike robot raised its head and revealed the Brainiac symbol.

"Wait a minute!" Bob blurted. "How did it get this new look?"

"No idea."

Frieza screamed again and pistoned his fingers forward and the magenta laser arced out. But the robot charged at it head on, turning over on its underside to reveal a big red panel that the death beam slammed into… and vanished.

"No!" Joe cursed. "It can absorb energy attacks, you idiot!"

The red panel on the robot's underside glowed, and it charged forward again, compressing itself into a smaller volume, the angular knees of its four crap like legs becoming painful impact points as it slammed into Frieza.

Joe blasted forward in attempt to subdue it, but then, the worst case scenario came to pass. The machine twisted into a distorted shape, like an Autobot in mid maximization, but it surrounded Frieza, and suddenly sharp prongs extended from key places around the deformed robot.

And in they went, jabbing through the purple pads across the Kold Prince's body. The head that bore the Brainiac symbol opened up and revealed another such ghastly mechanism… and then it sunk into the pad on Frieza's head, and his eyes bugged out as it sank into his brain, wiring itself into his twisted psyche.

"_PHRACK_!" Joe screamed at the top of his lungs, even as light and chi exploded from the confusion, drowning out his words in a rush of wind and blasting him away from the fray.

When it cleared, there were no longer two organisms, but one: a cybernetic terror with the technology of Brainiac… and the chi power of Frieza.

"Unit designated: _Ashe 1.5_. Integration of humanoid life form known as Frieza Kold complete."

Bob gulped as the newly identified cyborg turned to look at him and Joe, the Brainiac symbol clearly visible on its amalgamated head.

"We are Ashe," the fiend said. "We shall consume... Everything."

* * *

Author's Note: Lady Kalt was created by BobCat in the original Ballad of the Physics Police. Kalt is german for cold. 


	6. Kicked In The Ashe

**The Symphony of the Physics Police**

**Part Six: Kicked in the Ashe**

Joe and Bob stared down thief foe, the massively powerful combination of Bender, Brainiac, and now Lord Frieza H. Kold, ruler of the Galaxy. This did not bode well at all. Ashe… the being called itself. The substance that anything in its path would become.

Joe quickly reached for his communicator, and dialed up the Physics Police HQ. "Samir" he shouted. "This is Joe. We need help. YESTERDAY!"

"Will do, my friend." Sam said, pressing several buttons on the console he sat at.

Suddenly, Bob and Joe gasped as their time-loop belts, which they had neglected to take off after destroying the source of the time discontinuity, discharged a field of green energy around them. The cloud formations changed in the distance, slightly, and Ashe moved just a bit farther away.

"Bly me…" a new but familiar voice came in from beside them. Joe turned to his left to see John standing beside him, his Super Saiyan form activated. The Ultimate Warrior was a pinnacle of strength. How he had gotten there, Bob couldn't begin to guess.

But Joe knew.

"Let me guess," he said. "I asked Sam to send you here 'yesterday'… So he sent you here… Yesterday... Literally."

John nodded. "And the 'you' that made the request forgot to take your time belt off, and probably don't remember the plan we developed on the way here."

This would explain the other differences, Joe thought. The clouds were moved more because more air was displaced at the destruction of the Kami lookout. Because now retcon dictated that John had done it rather than Joe. And Ashe was farther a way because of simple prudence in the presence of a Super Saiyan who doesn't particularly like you.

"That's about the size of if," Joe agreed in a voice of pure melancholy.

"Then," said John, "we shall have to improv. Bob."

"What?"

"You stay back. This thing is undoubtedly very deadly, so Joe and I will do the heavy lifting. If you get an opening, throw an Ecto-Kamehameha at it?"

"A what?"

"Combine the wave with your ectoplasmic energy."

Bob blinked. "And how the slime am I supposed to do that?"

"They're your powers!" Joe blurted. "Figure them out! Use the Force if you have to."

John looked back. "You could also use the Physics Police Handbook. Kamehameha is in Chapter 42, page 41. Energy synthesis is pages six through nine.

"Right…" Bob trailed off, pulling out his PP Handbook. Joe had told him that it was now a formality and that he wouldn't ever really need it, so he'd completely forgotten about it. Bob began using the datapad's touch screen to select the right pages, and bookmarking them for quick reference…

Meanwhile, John and Joe charged forward, blasting towards Ashe. The android responded by dodging out of the way and blasting back at them with a series of energy beams. Joe dodge up and John dodged down, both returning fire with _ki_ blasts. Ashe blasted straight up, avoiding the blasts, then changed direction really quickly and blurred forward, hitting Joe in the chest. Joe went flying backwards and flipped over, then through a Buster Cannon (a signature move of Trunks) at Ashe.

Ashe charged right into it, the flesh on his chest sliding away to reveal another energy-absorption panel. How had one of THOSE gotten into Frieza's chest?

While the Buster Cannon was being absorbed, Super Saiyan John blasted forward, slamming a fist through Ashe's compound head and then slicing off his arm with a beam of chi that then tore through Frieza's spaceship in the distance, making the thing even less space worthy than it had been after Vegeta was through with it.

The damage didn't last, though. Ashe's head quickly reformed, and he reattached the arm like it was nothing.

"Of course," Joe muttered. "He's largely made from nano-machines because he started as Brainiac from the animated universe."

"That," said John, "totally fracking sucks."

"Yeah it does. It almost sounds like his abilities were measure to always be just enough to avoid obliteration by a Kamehameha or something."

"That would be too convenient," said John. "We can never have it easy."

"I suppose no**_aaahhHggh_**!" Joe's last word turned into a scream as Ashe blasted forward and grabbed his throat, then flew upwards into the atmosphere.

John followed, priming a Masenko as he went, and then hurling it in front of Ashe and detonating it when Ashe tried to dodge it. The explosion shook Joe free of Ashe's grasp, but also burned him a bit.

Joe shot John an angry glare, then proceeded to attack Ashe, slamming into his chest with an Eagle Kick and proceeding to beat the zark out of him.

Ashe responded by exploding with power, the blast knocking Joe and John away from him. The fired again, from two different sides, but Ashe adapted, opening up more hidden energy absorption units under his wrists, and absorbed both chi beams, then blasted towards John, pounding him with a series of punches and kicks, then slashing him across the chest with a sharp protrusion from his arm. Gritting his teeth, John jerked back and blasted Ashe in the face…

But the hybrid cyborg quickly healed.

_Guys, _thought Bob at the other two, _I've learned telepathy—this is so awesome!_

_Shut up! _Joe thought back, loudly. _This is no time to flaunt your abilities. Wait… I have an idea._

_Me too,_ thought John. _Bob, hold on a minute. Me and Joe are going to hold Ashe in one place, you blast him with the biggest Ecto-Kamehameha you can muster. Start charging it!_

Bob panicked, his thoughts rushing around for a minute before responding. _Shoot, I knew I was forgetting something. Telepathy, Energy, Kamehameha… Ah, here we go. Alright, so I just cup my hands together and say Kamehameha? That's it?_

_Yes that's it, you moron! _shouted Joe. _Now do it!_

_Right, sorry. _

John and Joe blasted forward and grabbed Ashe.

"Kaiyo-Ken!" Shouted Joe, suddenly surrounded by a red glow. "Do it now, Bob!"

**

* * *

**

Bob transformed into his ghost form and cupped his hands together. "Right, Okay. Here goes…"

"Kamehame…ha.." he said quietly, thrusting his hands forwards. A small blue beam appeared ahead of him and fizzled out..

"Bob! Do it bigger!" shouted John. "You have to put some oomph into it!"

"Ugh," he said. "I know, I know, but it's just so… so _anime. _I can't stand it."

"Bob!" shouted Joe, "Hit him hard or he's gonna get away!"

Bob cupped his hands together. Joe was right—if he didn't do this, he didn't deserve to meet Batman or Zaphod Beeblebrox or Wonder Woman—he really wanted to meet Wonder Woman.

"KAME… HAME… HA!" Bob shouted with a wince, thrusting his hands forward again. The ectoplasmic energy of his ghost-form combined with the chi of the Kamehameha wave, and a green beam lanced forward, straight towards Ashe—there was no way he would miss, it was dead on target…

Suddenly, Joe blinked when something on Ashe's head changed—a light went from flashing red to solid green, and his Brainiac symbol began to glow.

"Good bye," he said. Suddenly, the entire being glowed yellow, then vanished like scan lines on a television… This had the unfortunate side effect of creating a vacuum in the space between Joe and John, right where Ashe had been. The resulting pull of the vacuum jerked John and Joe together just as the Kamehame wave hit, locking both Physics Policemen inside!

"OH SNAP!" Bob shouted! "Crap! Crud! Darn it!"

He tried to shut of the wave and suddenly realized he didn't know how. Panicking, he began to shake his arms really fast. "Turn off, turn off you little prick!" he shouted at his hands, but to no avail. He began flailing his cupped hands wildly, but the beam flowed with them, acting like a whip, which Bob hastily slammed at the ground, hoping to knock the beam off his hands with sheer force…

Suddenly, just as the head of the beam slammed into the ground, the tail ended at his hands, and Bob's energy drained, forcing him to revert to normal. In the distance, the head of the beam crashed into the ground, exploding into a massive ball of energy that consumed half of Frieza's ship…

"I'm in big trouble…" Bob said. "Very big trouble."

**

* * *

**

"You're in big trouble!" Joe said to Bob. "Very big trouble!"

"I already know that," Bob said, wincing as he helped John and Joe out of the crater into which he had blasted them. "Because… You got vaporized…"

"And," Joe added, "because the villain got away. Because you waited to fire until AFTER he had finished assimilating Frieza's mind."

"In a job like this," John said, "hesitation can be disastrous." His tone wasn't forgiving, but much less caustic than Joes. "It's something you'll get with time. Assuming that Ashe doesn't destroy time."

"Hey," Joe barked. "I'm the cynical one here. Don't steal my modus operandi."

"Sorry," John said. "Say, does anybody hear something beeping?"

The three got silent for a minute, when they suddenly realized that it was Bob's com-link. Joe's and John's had both been shorted out by the energy wave, but Bob's was still working. The recruit removed it from his belt and activated it. "Unit 30X6B333 here," Bob said.

"I know who you are, Bob," said Sam on the other end. "What happened? The time-loop was fixed, and I sent in John to fight that thing that took over Frieza—what is your status now? I've lost signal for both Joe and John…"

"We're fine!" Joe shouted at Bob's comlink. "Give me that." Joe jerked it from Bob's hands, and wiped his other wrist across his spikey brown hair—he must have looked horrible…

"You look _horrible_." Sam said. "What happened? Get in a fight with a bag of charcoal again?"

"That was a very unique circumstance," Joe muttered. "No, our new recruit here through a Kamehameha at the villain."

"How does that effect you?" Sam asked.

"He mistook me and John as 'the villain.'"

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well…."

"What?"

"What is the status of the villain now?" Sam asked in exasperation.

Suddenly, John burst in and pushed Joe to the side, taking the communicator. "Uncertain," John said. "We had a bit of a… strategical error and Ashe escaped."

"Ashe?" asked Sam.

"That's what this new fusion of Brainiac and Bender is now calling itself. Ashe. No title or surname. File it under 'threats that could potentially destroy the multiverse.'"

Sam muttered something in Russian. "Another one? Just great. Alright, I'm going to bring you home and we can track him from here. HQ out."

**

* * *

**

"Okay," said Sam. "I've got the computer working isolating interdimensional channels…"

The four Physics Police men crowded behind a massive super-high-tech computer, watching as the system worked, showing 'overviews' of the traffic through multiple universes since Ashe had vanished from Namek.

"So, what exactly are we looking for?" Bob asked, starting up a smaller-scale similar sequence on a nearby smaller computer…

"The pathways must be scanned one at a time to prevent an flux in chaos or order. We're looking for any pathway that has a single unauthorized access in the past few minutes. That's the most likely path. I'd explain why, but the math is very complicated."

"Riiiiight," Bob answered. "So, why not just like, randomly press in a number and hope it works?"

"Because there are thirteen trillion universes to scan," Joe said. "The computer's way is much faster."

"….Point taken." Bob sighed, tapping two numbers, four and two, on his computer as it scanned. He hadn't intended to interrupt the search progress, but the screen suddenly displayed a blinking light, even as it made a loud noise. "Oh, crap, what have I done now?" Bob blurted.

"What did you do?" Joe demanded, suddenly beside him…." Then, his jaw fell as he stared at the screen. "Um…"

"What?" John asked.. "What did you do, Bob?"

"I just pressed some numbers and it started buzzing!"

"W…what?" Sam said, running over… He studied the screen for a moment, reading the displayed information with an incredulous look on his face." By George, you've found it! He took Interworld Route 42 from Namek to… Some world I've never heard of." Sam's smile reflected in the monitor grew wide, and he slapped Bob in the back. "Good job, my friend."

"Um… Thanks?" Bob said, not believing what he'd just done… "Why didn't the main computer scan this path?"

"It's not well known. It's not been used since whole Gilgamesh debacle. It's not a sure thing that its Ashe, but we'd need a blinking sign to be more certain." Sam ran over to the teleportation controls and began keying in Ashe's destination coordinates… "What were they again?"

John read them off. "JP-MNH-324-PMN. Not familiar with it either."

As Sam started keying in the coordinates, Joe's face went white. "This is not good."

"What?"

"I know what universe this is. And I know what Ashe must be after… We have to go, NOW. I'll explain on the way."

John nodded, and ran over to the teleportation pad, followed by Bob and Joe. "Samir, take us in."

"Energizing, Captain," Sam said with a smirk. "Oh, yeah, O'Conners wanted to see you after you finish this Ashe thing…."

Joe facevaulted. "What about?"

"No time now," John said. "Beam us, worry about Joe's career later."

"Right." Sam pushed the slider bar forward, and suddenly, the three fighters were gone in a beam of light. "Here they come to save the DAAAYYY!"

**

* * *

**

The group materialized high in the air, which was no problem for John and Joe. Bob, however, wasn't expecting it, and began to fall before he remembered that he was half-ghost and started floating haphazardly around the other two. "What exactly are we looking for?" he asked.

"Hold on…" Joe closed his eyes tightly, concentrating as he turned. Bob remembered it was something he'd talked about in his training—the ability to sense strong energy signals generated by the chi of all life. And because Ashe was physically mostly Frieza, he had a lot of chi.

Bob eventually looked down to realize that they were above a medieval countryside—medieval Japan, it seemed. Samurai clashed below while a group of armored warriors fired primitive bamboo-tube guns into their ranks, while a group of villagers fled through fields rice ponds. A young man road through on a caribou and took out several soldiers with an arrow, actually managing to shoot somebody's head off.

Wait… why was he on a caribou?

_It's an elk, _John thought at him.

Well that made sense, if it was an elk. No wait, that still didn't make a lick of sense, darn it. Why did anime have to be so illogical?

"There!" Joe blurted, pointing towards the west. "Just what I was afraid of. He's after the Deer God!"

Joe blasted off, leaving the confused John and Bob staring at each other. Both turned up the throttle all the way to catch up to Joe, and started interrogating him on what was going on.

"He's after the opening to a prayer? That's a bit dang metaphysical even for anime?"

"No," Joe said. "Not the DEAR GOD, the DEER God. The animal Deer. Call it the Forest Spirit if you like. Shishigami, Spongebob Godpants, whatever. Just HURRY!"

"What is so bad about this Deer God?" John asked…

"We're not sure what it is—some sort of demon, alien, creature from the future—nobody knows. In the anime _Princess Mononoke_ it is shown to have the power to give life and take it away with a touch. If Ashe is able to harness its powers, we are totally screwed."

"It still sounds like a horrible pun," Bob complained.

Joe frowned at him and scanned the valley and forest below. "There's Irontown, we can't be far… ….THERE!" Joe pointed towards a clearing, with strange lighting… "Swoop down, go into the forest. Element of surprise," Joe said. "Tear up the forest if you have to—the apes will plant more trees."

At breakneck speed, Joe blasted into the woods, tearing through the trees, John doing the same not far behind and Bob phasing through them in his ghost-form, until the got to the clearing.

But it was too late. In the middle of the clearing , a giant deer's body lay, propped up with its heads in Ashe's hands. The grass and flowers all around the dear were withering and dying, and the death was spreading outward from the epicenter where the Deer God was. The creature itself writhed and struggled to get free, but was futile—Ashe was projecting some sort of energy field around the creature, preventing it from getting free.

"This is the end of the line, Ashe!" Joe blurted. "Let that thing go and surrender."

"Negative-, replied Ashe. "The Knowledge of the Multiverse must first be obtained, and offspring produced, before we expire."

"That's what it wants? To pull a Brainiac, have a kid, then die?" John said. "Not much in the way of originality."

"The worst threats rarely are," Joe said. He turned to Ashe. "We will use lethal force if you persist. Cease this at once. Your programming has been contaminated. You are malfunctioning."

"Negative. We are Ashe. We are a synthesis of many into one. We will prevail where Brainiac, Bender, and Frieza could not. The Spirit that Claims Life and Death as its own must join this collective." Ashe's eyes flared, and Bob, Joe, and John charged forward, readying themselves to pound and pummel Ashe into oblivion…

Fire crackled on the dead plants below as the auras of the three Physics Police fired up, and all of the charged, converging on Ashe…

Suddenly, a sonic boom sounded nearby, and a glowing red meteor flew out of nowhere and struck John and Joe, blasting both of them into the woods beyond… Bob goggled. "Wasn't my fault this time!" he shouted.

Ashe, thankful for the distraction, ripped the head of the Deer God off and threw it several feet away, then transformed its left claw into a weapon immediately, blasting the entire head into atoms with a wide-energy beam. This also caused the Deer God's body to decay into some sort of oozing, pulsing liquid that began consuming the plant life that hadn't been burnt up, and also accelerated the rate of decay throughout the now-defile sacred clearing… Death was spreading all around—good thing Bob was half ghost.

Ashe transformed its right claw into a nozzle device, and reached into the soup the Deer God's body had become, and began sucking it up…

"NO!" Bob shouted, blasting forward in attempt to stop Ashe. "Darn it, stop winning! You're the villain!"

Before he could make contact with a punch, Ashe turned the hand that had vaporized the Deer God's head towards Bob, blasting the ghostly hero in the chest, sending him flying backwards. "Your interference is unwanted and futile. Further interference will result in lethal force…"

Angered, Bob reached his hand out and fired an ectoplasmic energy wave into Ashe, blasting him away from the Deer God's corpse, then flew above what remained, blasting it with a Kamehameha. "Absorb that," Bob barked. The beam struck Ashe, tearing the flesh of one of his arms, but leaving a metal skeleton underneath.

"Very well," Ashe replied, cupping his hands. "It seems like a most useful attack. Ka.Me.Ha.Me.Ha."

A red wave lanced out from Ashe's hands as he thrust them forward, blasting Bob backwards into a tree. "Negative," Ashe corrected itself. "Attack requires large amounts of latent energy present in the body. This slows muscle response time. Computing possible remedies for this drawback and preparing for World Jump."

"What?" Bob blurted, getting up despite his aching back. "You're jumping again? Well guess what! We can track you! We have a machines that can monitor the entire Multiverse back at Physics Police HQ, and monitor all the routes you can possible travel! That's how we tracked you before. We just isolated the routes out of Namek and found you. We'll do it again!"

"Assimilating information," Ashe said. "Tactical analysis complete. What is the location of the Physics Police HQ?"

"I'm not gonna tell you!" Bob blurted…. "It's against the…hand.. book.." his sentence trailed off.

Because suddenly, he realized what he'd just done—he'd given Ashe information that would make it IMPOSSIBLE to track him now! NO! If he new the mistake he'd made, he'd make sure it didn't happen again! Idiot!

"Very well. We will spare your life in return for the information with which you have imparted us. Stay out of our way, human. Lethal force will be used in the event of further interference."

And just as suddenly as he had on Namek, Ashe vanished in a yellow blur.

**

* * *

**

Bob quickly found John and Joe in a crater. "That's twice in one day I have to help you out of one of these," Bob complained..

When, suddenly he blinked. John and Joe were not alone in the crater. There was another with them—whatever had been inside that glowing red meteor blast that had hit them. At first, Bob had thought it was Mr. Mxyzptlk, the imp from the fifth dimension that had so often confounded Superman… It was only about 3ft tall, and sported a fedora, and had popped out of nowhere…

But that was where the similarities ended. This creature's fedora was brown, and it wore a similarly brown jacket that fell to his—Bob assumed it was male—knees. It wore khaki shorts as pants (but, because of his own height, the shorts covered his whole legs) and a yellow T-Shirt, and on his feet he wore just bland grey boots…He had a massive nose, and his left eye was a swirling vortex instead of an eyeball. It also possessed buck teeth and it's tongue flopped out of his impossibly spherical head.

"Um… Who is this?"

"No idea…" John scratched his head through his massive pile of Saiyan hair. "Did you take out Ashe."

Bob gulped, and looked at the ground. "He… got away. But I did manage to destroy most of the Deer God's body."

"Perfect," Joe muttered. "Just perfect." He then examined the newcomer, his eyes really annoyed. "It looks like a six-year-old tried to draw Indiana Jones while on an acid trip," Joe commented. He turned to the being. "Excuse me…" he said. "But, um… who the valberknelking kriff are you?"

"Hey, no need to be so rude," John said.

"Ieeeyuuuts OooowKAAAaayyy," the being suddenly blurted. "IEEEYYYEM SOOWRTUV UUUUUSED TOO THAYYUTT BYEE NOWW."

Everyone stared at him for a moment. Then two more.

"What did he just say?" Bob asked.

"Beast me," John said. "I have a Universal Translator in one ear and a Babblefish in the other and that still didn't make a lick of sense to me."

"MAIIYEE NAAYYEEM IYUZ EEDDIYUT MAYYUN," said the creature.

"Did he just introduce himself as Idiot Man?" Bob said with a facevault. "Idiot Man? What the shell kind of name is that?"

"Again," Joe said. "I point out the obvious. Acid trip."

"He doesn't seem to be intoxicated," John said, "Just really stupid."

"YYUUP," said Idiot Man, continuing in his strange dialect, which I will no longer try and reproduce. "I have on of theme there low Eye-Cues. Pleased to meet you all, though."

"How did you get to this world?" Bob asked listening closely and hoping he could make out the words.

"I came from another dimension. Ya see, when I was elected leader of my nation, they cast a magical spell on me that means any time something too lethal for me to survive happens, I just pop into another plane of existence instead of ceasing to be alive, or dying."

"Well, that was informative if not a little redundant," Joe said. "If Ashe got away, we have to get back to HQ anyway and track him. We'll try and get the little brain sore home too while we're at it."

"Joe, please, he's of low intelligence, not oblivious."

"John, he said he was used to it. I think. Doesn't matter…" Joe removed his newly refurbished communicator from his belt. "Sam, can you read me? We need a rift home. Bob screwed up again."

"Hey!'

"Just be thankful he doesn't know about Interworld Lanes. We can still track him as long as he doesn't learn how to avoid it."

"Um.." Bob said nervously….

"What?" Joe asked sharply.

Bob gulped, and then confessed his earlier blunder to the two other officers. The reactions were about what you'd imagine. Let's just say that John's left Bob unable to eat solid food for a month and Joe's was even worse…

Of course, we're just saying that. It's not true, but as to what they really did, you wouldn't believe me if I told you.


End file.
